button.
This software is free software for personal use only. However, no distribution is allowed without prior arrangement from the copyright owner so that we can track the number of copies being used.
THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. THOUGH THE AUTHOR HAS MADE EVERY EFFORT TO MAKE THE SOFTWARE PROBLEM FREE, BY USING THIS SOFTWARE YOU AGREE YOU ARE AT YOUR OWN RISK TO USE THIS SOFTWARE.
This software is designed to synchronize two directory paths for backup purposes. Backup is so important as you may have known your storage media such as hard drives and flash cards will fail sooner or later. For this reason, you better back up your data on physically different hard drives and other storage media. A mapped drive from another computer will be even better in case one computer crashes while the other can still be used immediately.
There are many ways to back up your data. A common and simple way is to copy a whole directory tree from one place to another. This can get very inefficient as your data keeps changing. With this approach, you will have to copy every thing as you do not remember which files have changed or which files have not as time passes by.
Plus when you have multiple copies of the same data and none of the copies is used as a master copy, you will easily have consistency problems in the future. This software is designed to keep the multiple copies of your data synchronized with minimal effort.
If this is your first time to use this tool, create a new sync
task using “File -> New” menu, or click the
button.
A sync task involves synchronizes two directory paths at your choice. You have the options to exclude some of the subdirectories and/or some of the files from the sync operation. Once you are satisfied with your choice, you have the option to save your sync task for any future sync operation.
If you have saved sync tasks from your previous use, you can instead
open an existing sync task using the 
button or the “File -> Open” menu. You have the option
to edit it before proceeding. Note: Do not try to use older
versions of the tool to open sync tasks created by new versions of
the tool as forward-compatibility is not always guaranteed to work.
To exclude files from your sync task, multiple file filters separated by semicolons (;) can be put into the “Exclude Files” text box. To choose a preset file filter, use “Add a Filter” combo box. Of course, you can always type your own filters directly into the text box. Filters adheres to the commonly used DOS and Unix wildcards convention:
| ? | Any single character |
| * | Any number of characters |
Warning: Do not be tempted to use any out of ordinary characters in your filters as it may throw the tool off the cliff. Technically any characters that have special meanings in regular expression constructs should be avoided unless you are an expert in this area. Do not leave a semicolon at the end of the filters. Semicolons must separate something other than spaces in between.
To start the comparison of the two directories, choose the
“Sync -> Start Compare” menu or click the
button. Any excluded
directories or files will not be included in the comparison.
Before comparing, you have the option to only compare file dates (“Sync -> Compare Only File Dates”) or compare full file contents (“Sync -> Compare Full File Contents”) of a file if it exists in both directory paths. In other words, if the compared files in both directories do not seem obviously different, you have the option to use a simple date check or force a complete content check to determine if they are identical. Simple date check is fast and mostly good enough but may not be always accurate to confirm the two files are identical. A good choice of the use of these two options is to use “ Compare Content” scarcely to make sure every thing is checked once a while.
Simple date check is known to be susceptible to certain types of file systems such as FAT. In those file systems, file dates are not saved in an absolute time system such as in GMT time format. This causes time to be skewed due to daylight savings time change during the year if different types of file systems are involved.
If you do not care about the difference between two same named files or you are sure they are the same if they are same named, you also have the option of comparing to find missing files only (“Sync -> Find Missing Files Only”).
After the comparison is finished, identical files and directories
will not be shown. A missing file will be shown with this icon
(
). A missing directory will
be shown with this icon (
).
If a file exists in both directory paths, the older and newer copies
will be respectively shown as the two icons
(
and 
).
In addition to the display of the file and directory names,
file sizes will be given in number of bytes and directory sizes
will be given in number of files in the directory. File and
directory last modified dates will be shown as well.
To manually copy or delete a file / directory in either path,
select the file / directory node in the GUI
and click either the 
or
button
depending on your needs. Sending a missing item to the other
side means deletion. Sending an existing item to the other side
means copy or overwrite depending on if the same item on the
other side exists. If the selected nodes are directories that
exist in both sides, you have the option to perform auto sync
(see below) on a finer granularity.
To automatically reconcile the difference between the two directory
paths, use the “Sync -> Auto Sync” menu
or the 
button. However,
for your data safety, we do not automatically overwrite files.
This could be one of the options in the future.
When choosing auto sync, you will have the chance to select how you want the auto sync to be done. If you want the auto sync happening from either side to the other side, select “Sync in both directions”. If you want the auto sync happening from right side to left side, select “Sync left path from right”. If you want the auto sync happening from left side to right side, select “Sync right path from left”.
The producer of this software also developed MyPrivacyKey ™, which is a suite of software tools that help protect your privacy in the digital form. MyPrivacyKey uses industrial strength public-key cryptography to secure your data stored on your hard drive or removable media and transmitted on the Internet, etc.
MyPrivacyKey is designed to be portable so that you can carry it with you and use it anywhere you can find a computer to use. With this design goal in mind, it targets to run on any removable media such as a USB flash drive with a very small footprint. Besides, it shall not need any installation onto the host computer before use.
Please check our website to get a free copy of the software.
If you believe you have found a bug with this software, send an e-mail to us and we will try to verify and fix it when we get a chance. In your e-mail, describe the scenario under which you found the bug. Also include the version and build number of the software.
Please help us help you. No amount is too small. Any donation is highly appreciated. If you like to help, please go to our web site at http://www.antsarmycomputing.com/dirsync for how. If you provide your email address, we will issue an electronic donation certificate to you. You can then load the certificate with this tool to take pride at it.
Contact us at dirsync@antsarmycomputing.com for suggestions, etc. To report bugs, please send email to support@antsarmycomputing.com. For general information about us, visit http://www.antsarmycomputing.com.
Thanks to Swing Labs for SwingX library. SwingX contains many useful components that are not available in the Swing package. Particularly we used the tree table provided by SwingX in this software.
Several button icons used in this software were downloaded from www.famfamfam.com. The use of the icons are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License from Mark James.
In case we missed any thing, if you believe you deserve a credit from the software, please let us know.